Have you ever booked a reward flight on UA, had the receipt emailed, the seats assigned but none of the miles removed from your account? This happened to my parents about a month ago and the miles have still not been taken out of their account. Does this ever happen? Will the miles be taken out eventually? Will United cancel their reservation at the last minute? I just would like to know if I should call and address the problem or if I should just shut up and let them get a reward for free. Thoughts?
Keep your mouth shut. The ticket won't be canceled and if anyone calls about it they can take the miles then.
Sounds good to me. Just wanted to make sure they weren't going to be stuck home for Christmas. Thanks!
WA is 100% correct-mum's the word but just make sure you don't "spend the miles on something else"* as if anyone does call and your mileage balance is not sufficient to cover the tix, then your parents might be stuck home for Christmas . And to add, try and keep a low profile on any schedule changes and if at all possible, accept them on-line vs speaking with an agent *at least until after the trip has been completed
You are right, but then again it's his parents and trying to find that connection is going to be a little bit more challenging. These "errors" happen more often than one would think. I have a colleague this exact same thing happened on UA and was never found. Another colleague was on British Airways - and this was an award on Concorde! No changes, don't talk about it, and if they catch it they catch it, if they don't they don't. Make sure there's ticket numbers attached to the reservation - mileage tickets will show on one's itinerary on-line, you will be able to select seats, etc., but when you try to print a receipt you can't because it hasn't been ticketed. If you are able to print a receipt and have actual ticket numbers starting with "016..." your parents are good to go! Some have reported UA does an audit on accounts sometime in December and a few had miles taken away for one reason or another. Safe travels. UG
So the question is - how many times does a UA system go back and audit the tickets and make sure UA received compensation for the ticket issued? Compensation could be in the form of a credit card charge, cash at the counter or miles debited from someone's account? We all hear all the time how many different systems run UA. Surely they have audit checks if they have so many systems talking to each other. Aren't there cases of people seeing miles debited from their account 6-8 weeks after they booked the ticket/upgrade? -RM
I'm guessing it's not actually ticketed bc of some issue with the taxes or availability. I have had this happen several times, and it's always bc there is an issue with the ticket. I would call them sooner raged than later to verify that it is ticketed
Don't call. If the website shows a Receipt or if the OP received an email with a valid e-ticket number starting with 016 then the ticket is issued and nothing needs to be done. -RM
And on the flip side there are probably lots of people who applied for mileage upgrades, had their miles deducted but the upgrade not cleared, and they never got the miles back (and didn't realize they had to call in to get them refunded).